"Kaizen" means bad karma for Subaru workers

By Ryan Amptmeyer <amptmeye@sage.cc.purdue.edu> 2 September, 1995

LAFAYETTE,INDIANA...
Indiana politicians cheered the anti-union Subaru-Isuzu
Automotive plant in Lafayette when it was built in 1989. Today the
plant is eliciting harsh criticism from labor leaders. The company
located its huge factory in Tippecanoe County due to lucrative cash
handouts financed by county and state taxes. The handouts were the
brainchild of Republican former Governor Robert Orr, and amount to
roughly $50,000 per job created.

Laurie Graham, a former doctoral student at Purdue and
currently a professor of labor studies at Indiana University in
Kokomo, worked at the Subaru plant for six years. She entered the
factory with the intent of exposing the horrors of a non-union
shop. Her new book, "On the Line with Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese
Model and the American Worker" blasts the anti-union management
philosophy of KAIZEN. In a kaizen-oriented shop, workers are
encouraged to complain and blow off steam, but the complaints are only
swept under the rug by management.

Such disregarded complaints have resulted in several
lawsuits. A class action suit filed by Bruce Socker alleges violations
of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit also accuses the
company of negligence in knee and shoulder injuries, and wrist
injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome. These injuries are caused by
mandatory 12-hour shifts. Prof.Graham said,"I have never worked so
hard for so long in my life. If workers don't organize there, the
injuries will continue." Prof.Graham correctly criticized her former
bosses because of their vicious anti-labor policies, not because of
their nationality.

African-American inspection worker Reginald Mallett filed a
separate lawsuit. He says he was the victim of racist slurs, jokes,
prejudice, and even physical threats. In 1992, Mallett was officially
reprimanded for refusing to accept a verbal apology instead of filing
a written complaint when a co-worker threatened to burn a cross on his
lawn.

Janitors working for a contractor at the plant have observed
management personnel coercing workers into wearing anti-UAW stickers
on their hardhats.

In another Indiana labor struggle, the Indiana Department of
Environmental Management handed Lafayette residents a temporary defeat
by approving A.E.Staley's request to double air emissions of propylene
oxide. The August 25 decision defies militant and persistent public
outcry against the company. Lafayette residents were given only 18
days to appeal the decision. In one such appeal, the rehire of all
locked-out AIW-UPIU workers in Decatur, Illinois was listed as one of
the conditions that Staley would have to meet before neighbors will
consent to the pollution permit.